Acting Risks Quotes

I've seen many actors go awry by making the wrong choices early on.

We have to be vulnerable as actors, but we have to protect ourselves.

When I'm acting, I have zero control, and it's the scariest thing anyone can do in that field because, you know, your face is always the one that's out there in front of the camera, and any number of things can happen to you once you've done your work. It can be edited badly, it can be distributed badly, or it can not be distributed at all. And I've certainly experienced that; every actor has.

I remember when I first wanted to act my parents were supportive, but it was that they were like please, if you can find something else in the world, don't do this. So it wasn't even they're like 'Oh we've been waiting for you to arrive, welcome to the family business' kind of thing.

I am now determined to do really weird parts but I think I overdo it in auditions so nobody really trusts me!

I thought a parent's job was to tell their children not to go into acting as a profession!

If I was like some of the characters I played, I'd probably be dead by now.

What's totally terrifying is that, unlike a musician who has a musical instrument, or a painter that's got a canvas and a brush, acting is us. Our energy, our soul, our spirits. And it's so hard because it's so vul­nerable. You're exposing everything.

In the film industry you never really know if all the various ingredients will come together - sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. As an actor, you don't have much control over those things. It's a director's medium in that sense. All you can really do is minimise the risks of being involved in something that might not work and look for something that also suits you.

As an actor, you put yourself out there. You put yourself in the arena as an easy target.

As actors, we have that in common that we go for slightly out-of-the-box or genre stuff. They're great when they work, but they don't always work. Genre stuff is really hard to pull off, as any fans of it know.

Actors love to do extreme things, so that is why they become actors; otherwise, they'd be novelists.

For acting, darlings, is the world's most perilous trade. Compared with actors, steeple jacks and deep-sea divers lead snug and placid lives.

I have a theory about that, if you have to say something, if you have encourage for one second a prospective acting student - he should not go in to acting.

Irreversible is not glamorous at all. I try to do different things because I want to grow as an actress and I like to take risks.

I think it's very dangerous for an actor to take [shooting] too seriously because I think it could really damage you if you do that.

I'm not sure whether it's good fortune or bad, but I've died many times on screen.

I think what Laura Linney was saying about teaching her all the lessons as a child actor, right, that's a whole ball of wax. That's a really mixed bag of stuff. I look at so many people that I knew personally or didn't know personally but who have ended badly, have died young, have been destitute - there are a lot of bad child-actor-gone-wrong stories, a very high percentage, but I think the thing about it is that a lot of those are Hollywood stories, and you don't have that same kind of a thing in the theater.

It's always difficult to play a scene of physical violence because you're always afraid that you don't know your own strength and might hurt someone.

Learning method acting might mess me up.

My wife says that stage acting is like being on a tightrope with no net, and being in the movies, there is a net - because you stop and go over it again. It's very technical and mechanical. On stage you're on your own.

It's a werewolf movie with Christina Ricci, and it was a chance to work with some good people. But playing yourself is always fairly risky because you gotta watch how you goof on yourself.

Being on stage is a seductive lifestyle. My advice to aspiring actors is think twice. People sometimes go into acting for the wrong reasons - as a shortcut to fame and fortune. If these goals are not attained, they feel a bitter disappointment.

When you take the job, you never think about how many days you're going to take bullets. Sometimes you go on set and you're thinking, "Ah, a day when I don't have to get shot. This is going to be a nice day."

Actors in general have become very spoiled in the roles they choose these days. When I first started in this profession - about a hundred years ago in the last century - it was all about taking risks, it was about doing the job and honing the craft.